


then it vanished away from my hands

by qbrujas



Series: i learn myself in you [5]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: (you've been warned), And the Bureaucracy Thereof, Angst, F/M, Murphy and the events of book one are mentioned, Unhappy Ending, Vampire Turning, deals with the properties of the detective's blood, other tags TBA, set a few years in the future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28842711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qbrujas/pseuds/qbrujas
Summary: Eva has made the decision to turn, has followed Agency protocol to the letter. It does not go as planned.
Relationships: Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Series: i learn myself in you [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2008429
Comments: 35
Kudos: 33





	1. prelude (incident)

The process and the preparations are much less complicated than Eva expected them to be. 

Tedious, repetitive, but simple.

She speaks to Rebecca. More as a courtesy than anything else; she seeks her informed opinion as a colleague and as a member of her team, as an experienced mentor, but not, never, as a daughter.

Rebecca isn’t happy, not at all, but she has long resigned herself to the fact there is nothing she can do, that Eva wouldn’t listen to her even if there was.

Not in this.

 _(“Maybe there is some of me in you, after all,” Rebecca had told her, what seems like a lifetime ago. A different conversation, long before she knew the depth of what she was getting into, and yet it echoes, now, in her mind._ )

Eva fills out a request form.

After the Agency greenlights it, and only then, she quits the police department.

This does require a few explanations, but Eva's involvement with the Agency isn’t a secret, even if the nature of it is.

Neither is it a secret that she had never wanted to join the force at all, and so nobody is exactly shocked—it’s not hard to convince everyone of what is, in the end, more than half the truth: they have offered her a better job that is much more suited to her skillset and inclinations.

A job that, most importantly, takes her away from Wayhaven.

(She had, after all, always wanted to leave. This is something everyone knows.)

Captain Sung is sorry to see her go, tells her she was a fine detective and that Rook would have been proud of her. She barely tenses at this.

Tina insists on throwing her a goodbye party.

Verda congratulates her on the promotion, with a smile and good wishes and love from Eric and Cara and Lacey.

She will miss them, a little. Not enough.

Not anywhere near enough.

* * *

Then there’s paperwork, more paperwork than she has ever had to deal with in her life.

There is counseling, endless sessions that she sits through with gritted teeth.

She finds them unnecessary. Redundant. She knows her own mind and doesn’t need, _hasn’t ever needed_ any of this.

They are, of course, meant to ensure this is not something she will regret.

_Why has she chosen this? What are her motivations?_

She is made to list all of them. Outline them. Number them and rank them and develop them as though it is a test.

In a way, it is.

They do not say it is, but it hangs, unspoken, in the air. The idea that they might _strongly discourage her_ from pursuing this if they consider she is not doing it for the right reasons, not _fit_ for the transformation, for the shift it will bring to her life.

She is aware of this.

The minefield of questions she navigates with practiced ease. She does not say how the human world has lost every appeal it might have once held, but she does say her life is not, cannot be merely _human_ anymore.

Not after everything she’s been through.

The counselor nods at this. They are a fae of some kind, but they were not born as one.

This, Eva knows, works in her favor.

It is not wise to tie these decisions to interpersonal relationships, the counselor says, their voice level and impersonal, almost flat. Of course, she must be aware of this already, is she not?

She is currently romantically involved with a vampire, yes?

It is imperative that she acknowledge the possibility of this relationship ending. Would she still want to go through with this, if that were the case?

Would she still want to live through eternity, then?

Immortality is not reversible. This is something she must remember.

Immortality is _not_ reversible.

Eva suppresses a scoff, taps her foot on the ground. Taps her fingers on the arm of the chair. But she nods her assent anyway.

The process could be deferred for a year or two if she wished it; she is within the optimal time window still. It would give her additional time to reflect.

It is something they recommend. Though of course, they are quick to insist, the choice is ultimately hers.

She thanks them, and she declines it.

This, then, leads to more paperwork. Paperwork with questions and specifics about every last, minute detail.

Does she want to have the process handled by an Agency representative, or does she have a request for someone specific?

The Agency does not recommend that the process be carried out by a romantic partner. Is she aware of this?

She is, naturally.

(Nate wouldn't do it, anyway.)

(And after the conversation with Nate, she had wanted to ask Morgan. But Morgan—well, Morgan _can't_.)

Is she aware of the risks? The survival rate? The potential trauma? The changes that her body will/could suffer? The recovery period?

The unpredictability of her blood?

_The risks?_

_The survival rate?_

_The potential trauma?_

Rinse and repeat, ad nauseam.

She signs what feels like a hundred release forms, over and over.

She wants to do this the right way, the proper way.

(When has she _ever_ done things any differently?)

She signs the forms and the paperwork without complaints, without hesitation and without delay.

* * *

The day comes.

(Weeks later, after all the forms have been processed and reviewed and approved, signed and countersigned. But eventually, it comes.)

With Morgan it's simple. It's her steely gaze and a raised eyebrow, questioning. Questions Eva is familiar with.

_You sure about this? No taking it back now._

And then, same as always: _you all right?_

Eva gives a sharp nod, her shoulders relaxing.

That is the only answer Morgan needs from her. 

(Morgan has always believed her when Eva tells her she can handle herself. That knowledge, in itself, is reassuring.)

* * *

With Nate—with Nate it’s not so easy. Not so simple.

It never has been, not with the way they feel about each other, not with the way they cling to each other, to every breath, to every beat of their hearts.

There is worry and fear in his eyes, dark and consuming, and she knows he is thinking about everything that could go wrong. She wants to soothe him, wants to kiss him and tell him it’s okay, it’s going to be okay.

So she does.

And he sinks into it, grateful for the distraction (this, he always is; this has not changed). Grateful for any excuse not to think about what could be, his mouth almost devouring her own in a nearly bruising kiss and here she understands what he is telling her, too.

_Please._

_Please, I can’t live without you._

_I spent three hundred years without you and I can’t do that anymore._

The pendant he had given her lies against the hollow of her throat, warm between them as their bodies press against each other’s, the heliotrope and edelweiss, the white clover and honeysuckle.

_Deep devotion, eternal love._

Eternal love.

She does not mention it and neither does he, but she knows it does not escape his notice that she is wearing it. The agreement it stands for, the acceptance.

There had been arguments, before the choice was made.

(Though in reality the choice had been made long, long before, from the first time his hands left trails of fire on her skin and she wanted nothing more than to be branded, burned, for it to leave a permanent, indelible mark.)

(Everything that came after that was just confirmation of what she already knew.)

There had been arguments.

There had been raised voices that she regretted, that she very nearly hated herself for. But she couldn’t understand why or how—this is something she has never understood about Nate, and something Nate has never understood about her.

Humanity, humanity, humanity—

_(“Would you rather watch me die?”_

_She spit out the words at him, not out of malice, but with the knowledge that they would hurt. Knowing, too, that the hurt was necessary. Knowing that unless she did things this way nothing would ever get done._

_Nothing would ever get solved, concerning the very glaring problem they were facing._

_“I won’t do that to you.”_

_Mortality was a problem, and this was the solution._

_“Even if nothing happens to me, how long do we get before I’m too old? Thirty years? How long is that to you, Nate? You've been alive more than ten times that.”_

_She paused then, but he said nothing. He'd fallen quiet, and she could feel the harshness of her words and her voice, the knife being twisted deeper each time she spoke, but there was no point to gentling them when he refused to see what was in front of them: they did not, would not have another choice._

_“Shit, Adam has been alive a millennium and you will too—are you going to remember me in five hundred years?”)_

She pushes the memory away.

She cups his face with both hands now, the kiss turning gentle, soft. His lips brush against hers, lightly, so lightly, and send a tingling feeling through her entire body.

His skin is warm under her hands and the taste of him, mint and rain, almost makes her forget everything else, everything, nothing but him in her thoughts.

_Nate._

“I love you,” she whispers in the space between their lips as she pulls away, only a fraction, eyes still half-closed and relishing the taste, the feeling of him. The warm comfort of his hands still tangled in her hair. “ _Te amo_. I'll be fine, _mi vida_. Don't worry so much about me.”

“You know that's impossible, _jaan_ ,” he says in return, and though she knows he is serious (they have discussed this time and time again), there's still a soft smile on his lips. “And I love you. More than I will ever have the words for.”

She smiles, warm, fond, and nudges her nose against his.

Words have never been her strong suit.

But she’s found them, with him, found words old and new as she has found warmth and light and _life_.

“I’ll be back to you in no time. You know how stubborn I am,” she says lightly, and kisses him again, short and sweet.

A promise, a beginning.

* * *

She had asked Adam to do it.

He was the obvious choice,

(choice, choice, _choice)_

if Nate wouldn’t and Morgan couldn’t; she and Adam don’t often _speak_ but there is respect and there is understanding between them, too. There is determination and a desire for order that they share.

(he had also made a choice, once)

She would trust him with her life, and so she does.

(The fact of the matter is she would trust them _all_ with her life and much more.

Farah just as much as the others, too, even if she is not as close with the younger vampire, by virtue of temperament. But she loves her as she would love a sister, as she would love someone whose absence would make the world dimmer—how funny, she thinks, that she _loves_ her, that she loves them.

She had never loved like this before.)

* * *

It is difficult not to think of the warehouse on the outskirts of Wayhaven.

Not the one she has now come to know as _home,_ but the other one, the one where she knew, for the first time, what involvement with the supernatural would truly mean.

The sterile environment of the Agency facility is nothing like it.

Clean-smelling, almost like a clinic; white and well illuminated and with doctors and techs on hand to supervise and monitor.

She signs one final form on entry and then there is nothing standing between her and _this._

It is difficult not to think of the first time she felt vampire fangs ripping into her skin.

Adam’s barely puncture her neck, instead of tearing into her wrist as Murphy’s had done. Almost gently, almost delicately—with care and quick efficiency.

It is not the first time since then that she has felt the bite of fangs (always willing, always wanted), but bury it as she may, the memory always resurfaces.

She closes her eyes and focuses on the feeling.

There is a lingering _something_ , an ache in her temples, like being underwater far too deep.

Pressure in her ears, a ringing sound.

It passes after a few seconds and Eva feels the pain in her neck, sharp and deep—there’s warmth and she thinks, oddly, incongruously, that it is not too unlike having her blood drawn.

She is aware of what’s happening: she insisted on knowing the mechanics of it, every step.

The warmth she feels is the injection of venom into her bloodstream, and within minutes it will start attacking her DNA, it will start melding with her own genetic code and changing it, altering it, molding it.

Enhancing it.

Adam withdraws now, pulls away from Eva’s neck and wipes away the very small amount of blood left on his mouth with the back of his hand, his expression unreadable as always.

She has been warned of the pain that comes next.

She has been warned of the way her body will feel like it’s on fire, of the way her muscles will pull and stretch and her bones will reshape and her blood will burn from within.

She has been warned.

But it doesn’t come.

The wound in her neck pulses along with her heartbeat, and there is a trickle of warm blood running down her skin, down her throat.

There is no pain.

By now she should, by all accounts, be undergoing a full transformation, genes and physiognomy rearranged, blood reconfigured.

She should be in agony.

All she feels is the warm trickle of the blood and the pulsing of the small wound.

Nothing is happening.

A different feeling starts to bubble in her throat.

She meets Adam’s eyes, and he looks just as confused as she is.

No mistakes have been made, she knows this, she is sure of this.

Everything has been controlled and accounted for; regulated, monitored.

She sees, out of the corner of her eye, the techs start to speak among themselves.

It’s not working.

Why is it not working?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooooh boy, this one. strap in, we're only getting started.
> 
> This was inspired by a [post](https://crowsintheisland.tumblr.com/post/638318852983390208/we-always-talk-about-a-detective-who-chooses-to) on tumblr by user crowsintheisland.


	2. denial (confrontation)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mutation in her blood was not known to inhibit physical abilities. None of the studies had indicated even the slightest possibility of immunity to vampire venom.
> 
> And yet.

_The transition can last anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours._

_The exact duration is impossible to predict with certainty, as is the intensity of the pain she will endure, or the extent of the physical transformation._

_(She has now heard all about Nate’s, how extreme it was—the worst the Agency has known since its establishment._

_But things are easier now than they were three centuries ago, in the middle of the ocean, with… with everything that happened to him._

_Things are easier._

_There are substances that can dull the pain, if not counter it entirely. There are measures in place to make this go as smoothly as it possibly can. She will not have to suffer like he did._

_Not least of all because she is choosing this._

_That is a difference.)_

_Once the transition is complete and deemed successful, she will, in all likelihood, pass out from exhaustion. Nearly everyone does._

_(Nearly everyone, of the ones who survive.)_

_She will then stay at the facility overnight, under observation until her condition becomes stable._

_In addition to any of the common complications that might arise from the process itself, she will be monitored for out of control, violent tendencies upon reawakening (this is not a rare occurrence among the newly turned, she has been told), or for any unexpected reactions her blood might have to the vampire venom._

_This will be the most difficult, painful period. Anything that touches her skin will feel like sandpaper. The slightest sound will be too loud._

_There will be screaming. Thrashing. She will want to tear her skin apart and climb out of her body._

_(A body she may or may not recognize anymore.)_

_This is expected._

_And there will be the hunger. She will have to learn to live with this. Control it._

_Over the next few days, her senses will stabilize. It will still be painful, and it will take much longer to learn to dampen them if she so chooses—but she will learn to function despite the pain. It will be a dull, constant ache she will grow used to._

_She will then be reintroduced to people other than Agency medical staff._

_Nate will be first. His presence is likely to be the only one she will be able to tolerate at this point.  
_

_(He will not be allowed to see her before this. This is for the best.)_

_Then the others._

_Morgan._

_Adam._

_Farah._

_In that order._

_Then Rebecca._

_(Because she is Agent Rebecca Navarro, the handler of Unit Bravo. Not because she is Rebecca-comma-her-mother.)_

_Her first feeding will be supervised, once again, by specialized staff._

_It will not be human blood, not the first time._

_Human blood is too intense, too flavorful, and it risks overwhelming her already fragile senses. It will give better results for her to work her way up to it over a period of time._

_(She wonders who was the first to arrive at this conclusion, and how they had done so, but this has been Agency policy for at least a hundred years.)_

_Then, later, there will be tests._

_Her blood will be studied again, analyzed for the way its unique composition might have changed or been influenced by the turning process. To assess if it retains any of its special properties, or if it is now indistinguishable from that of a regular vampire._

_Eventually, she will be allowed to leave the Facility, and move back to the Warehouse._

_She will meet with the fae counselor again. Twice a week, at first, then once weekly. This will continue for the next few months._

_Once they deem it appropriate, she will be cleared to go on missions again._

_Things will continue as normal._

_With Eva finally, fully, a part of this world she has had a foot in for years now._

* * *

These are the things Eva had been prepared for.

The things she had researched, been informed of, agreed to. This is how things were supposed to go.

(Everything had been outlined in the paperwork she had signed, laid out for her in meetings and sessions the minute she had formally expressed her wish to turn.)

These are not the things that happened.

What _did_ happen is something that has never, for as long as the Agency has had records (and the Agency has records dating back a very, very long time), happened before.

Failed supernatural turnings happen all the time, even under the supervision of the Agency.

Bad reactions to the venom, to the bite. People who are not strong enough, physically or mentally or emotionally.

People who are simply unlucky. It happens.

The strain of the process has claimed many lives.

The Agency tries to minimize the risk with all their prior assessments, but the odds are still not, never, favorable ones.

Eva knows this—this is what she agreed to.

In the end, it was a simple matter of probability—a 50%, 60%, 70% chance of death was always better than the eventual 100%.

(Always better than the knowledge that she would eventually waste away, and that her _family_ —that _Nate, her Nate—_ would have to watch. That she would have to see the already very obvious gap between them grow wider and wider with each passing year.)

It was the only thing that mattered that she had a chance, rather than none at all.

All or nothing.

This is what she agreed to.

But it has never happened before, for as long as the Agency has records, that the bite of a vampire, with the intent and the ability to turn, has absolutely no effect on the person who receives it.

No transformation.

No pain.

Nothing.

Eva’s blood has been studied in as much depth, its properties determined with as much precision and certainty, as the Agency’s technology and reagents have allowed.

The results have been—had been—deemed conclusive.

She was found to be immune to pheromones of all types, siren song, aura reading, precognition, tracking abilities, mood amplifiers.

All of this she has experienced firsthand during missions.

She is _not_ immune to toxins, poisons, spores, paralyzing agents, venoms, or magically inflicted conditions.

This she has also experienced firsthand.

The mutation in her blood was not known to inhibit physical abilities. None of the studies had indicated even the slightest possibility of immunity to vampire venom.

And yet.

 _And yet_. Here she is.

A still-bleeding bite on her neck.

Still human.

* * *

That night, she does not sleep.

She stays at the facility overnight, as she was meant to.

For very different reasons than she was meant to.

No one knows how to react to what has happened, Eva least of all, so she does the only thing she can trust herself to do: try to find an explanation, a solution.

Something that will allow her to move forward.

The medical staff is just as bewildered as she is, _almost_ as eager to find out why it didn’t work.

There are more tests.

There will need to be more tests, later.

More studies, things they had measured before that will need to be measured again.

Her blood is drawn, sent for quick analysis.

There is no trace of venom in it.

It shouldn’t have disappeared so quickly. It shouldn’t have disappeared at all.

It makes no sense.

* * *

Nate is as panicked as she is forcing herself not to be.

(He has never done well under stress. This, too, has not changed.)

There is that tightness to his mouth, that slightly more forceful way he shoves his hands in his pockets.

It is so easy to revert to old habits. Especially ones that are hundreds of years old.

He tells her she should sleep, tells her they can work this out in the morning.

(Tries to soothe her when all she wants is to _solve_ this.)

This was not part of the plan. Her hands are shaking.

Nate takes them in his—unsteady as he is right now, the contact helps. It always does.

He is probably right: it makes no difference to have the tests carried out at three or eight in the morning. But it is about the feeling of activity as much as it is about activity itself, and if she stands still she might go mad.

Too often she falls into action as a replacement for feeling.

It is so easy to revert to old habits. Even if they are not hundreds of years old.

She takes a deep breath. Lets Nate’s proximity ease her a little.

Nate is right.

She will—they will—figure this out.

It will work out.

It has to.

* * *

Over the following weeks, once the initial wave of panic subsides, Eva falls into a routine.

She does not have obligations to the station or to Wayhaven anymore, so she dedicates herself entirely to the Agency.

Unit Bravo is still sent on missions. She is still expected to take part in them, as she was before.

Her life at the Warehouse continues much the same as it was. With Nate, with the others.

She has always been good at compartmentalizing.

Every moment she does not spend with them, however, is now spent at the Facility, in the lab, meeting with doctors and scientists.

She doubles down on the research she had already begun to specialize in: supernatural biology was always going to be her field of study, a chance to put her skills and previous knowledge to far, far more use than she had ever managed as an officer, as a detective. From the moment the Agency started to trust her she had requested to be kept up to date on findings and developments, had requested permission to be included in research programs—to varying levels of success—and spent much of her free time studying what was already known.

_(There had been many long, comfortable evenings spent with Nate in his library, reading treatises and books she still couldn’t believe ever made it to regular, human publication. He’d laughed softly when she’d brought that up, once, as she lay on the couch with her head resting on his lap._

_“I mean it,” she said, looking up at him with a half-laugh of her own. She’d been reading a tome from the early 20th century that detailed the regeneration abilities of phoenixes. “How did anyone take this seriously enough to publish?” She turned the book to glance at the cover again. “And this was a regular publishing house.”_

_That, in turn, led to a fascinating conversation about humans’ tendency to ignore anything that disrupted their worldview too much, and the extent to which the Agency had in fact been connected to that “regular publishing house”, and how Nate knew the person responsible for the publication of that specific book._

_The amount of actual studying she managed during those evenings always varied.)_

Her newly acquired clearance now grants her access to tests and studies that she can sign off on herself, that she doesn’t need to request from Rebecca (or from anyone) with the hope that they’ll be approved.

Old habits come back, forgotten from her days at university, from a different life. She finds herself slipping into the same rhythm she had been so comfortable with, once—but there is a strange calmness to it even underneath her fevered, focused drive; something soothing about losing herself in slides and results and research.

This is what she had wanted, years ago, before the police, before Bobby. This is exactly what she had wanted.

She has _so much_ of what she had always wanted.

And yet underneath that feeling, there is something else that is slowly, very slowly growing.

Very slowly taking root.

She does not look at it.

She does not think about it.

_(Please don’t let it be taken away.)_

She does _not_ think about it.

She keeps herself busy.

* * *

When the Agency clears it, she contacts Verda again.

Eva knows he still has the blood test results from the Murphy case, from Janet Greenland. His research led nowhere, but it remained untouched.

He’s happy to hear from her—asks about her new job. She tells him she’s working in a lab that would make him jealous, would make even the City people jealous. She makes a joke about the Agency’s budget; he laughs.

It’s so easy.

(She _is_ glad to hear his voice, and she asks with genuine interest about Eric and Cara and Lacey—they are doing wonderfully; little Lacey just had her birthday—but it is still so, so easy to lie.)

It is just as easy to convince him to send her his findings. The Agency, it turns out, is a wonderful excuse for pretty much anything, and he is all too happy to help her.

It ends up being yet another dead end. Janet Greenland’s blood had the same properties as her own, and Verda’s analyses say far less than the Agency’s.

There is nothing new in them, nothing Eva didn’t already know.

Another closed door.

(And that feeling is still there. Roots and vines spreading within her.)

* * *

It has been months.

She is no closer to finding a solution now than she was then: every door closes as soon as it opens. There had been another attempt—a different vampire, an Agency representative she didn’t know—it didn’t matter, it still didn’t work.

There have been tests and studies and even the possibility of turning into a different kind of supernatural—nothing, nothing. Nothing seems to lead anywhere.

It has been months, and she is too aware, too painfully aware in a way she can’t ignore that months easily turn into years and she is not thirty years old anymore, has not been for a while.

It has been months and the roots and vines that grow within her have taken hold, have reached her throat. That thought is still there, that feeling.

She wakes up in the middle of the night and she can’t breathe.

It takes her a terrifying, delirious moment to realize she is in her room—

(in _their_ room, hers and Nate’s, their room in the Warehouse)

(and she’s not sure what she was dreaming except that she is left with that feeling of being on the edge of an abyss, of being about to fall)

—and Nate is there, he is always there, warm hands and strong arms and he is holding her against him, whispering into her ear—in languages she does not know but which have become familiar to her because they are _his—_ until she can breathe again.

He whispers to her in Spanish, too, and in the middle of the night, lost as she feels, it hurts.

Hurts in the full, aching way his love has always hurt, in the way that makes the unshed tears of years past want to finally fall.

They don’t.

She blinks them away, buries her face in the crook of his neck.

“ _Jaan_ , love,” he says later, later, after her breathing has settled. His voice is all concern, all sweet care, spoken against her hair. “Sleep.”

He knows he won’t get her to talk, not when she is like this. He has learned her moods and her disposition, knows them better than she herself does. But she hasn’t slept through a night in weeks, and the worry in his voice mirrors the way his hands trace shapes on her skin, warm, soothing.

She doesn’t respond.

“I will figure this out,” she says instead. _I have to,_ she doesn’t say.

She doesn’t look at him.

She’s not sure, really, if she’s saying it to Nate or if she’s saying it to herself.

He draws back, puts the smallest amount of space between them. Hooks a finger under her chin, tilts her head up so she can meet his eyes.

_God, those eyes._

Those eyes have always been her undoing.

The purest, darkest brown (and she can’t see well enough now in the low light of their room, but she doesn’t need to, she knows them by heart, could bring them to mind at any moment—there is an even darker ring around the iris, long dark lashes framing them), warm and blazing in a way that stirs her alive.

“Eva,” he says, simply (and yet not, because there is _nothing_ simple about her name in his mouth). It pulls her back from her thoughts, as it always has, as it always does.

(It’s in the way he says it. He has always said it the way it’s meant to be said, the way very few people in her life ever have. The subtle inflections of his accent shape themselves around it instead of forcing it into a different sound and those two syllables have never sounded as right as they do when he says them.

 _The name of a person you love is more than language_. She’s not sure where it’s from. He quoted it to her once.

 _I summon you back by saying your nombre._ This one she knows. It stings, in that same full, beautiful way.)

It’s too much.

His eyes and her name and his voice and his arms and the warmth of him around her and the vines in her throat. Too close. Too close.

Too much.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

Her voice cracks. She hates that it does.

Nate blinks, once, twice, before his frown deepens with even more concern and even more love and even more care.

Those are not words heard from her often or even at all. _I apologize_ , if she needs to, if she feels it is warranted—reparations and actions but not this. Never this.

“What for, my love?”

_I don’t know._

_I’m sorry I’m falling apart._

_I’m sorry I’m breaking down._

_I’m sorry this is such a mess and I’m sorry I’m getting overwhelmed and I’m sorry I don’t know what to do and and and_

Everything in her wants to push the words down.

So she drags them out of her throat.

Painful, painful, it has always been painful (it will never not be painful; her heart was not made for this) but it is pain she embraces, pain that comes from love and from feeling.

She would not, could not hide anything from him. Even if it means giving voice to that one thought that she has refused, refused to look at ever since she felt it make its home in her mind.

Voicing it gives it shape.

Giving it shape makes it something that needs to be confronted.

_(“I’ve cracked myself open for you and nothing has ever given me such pleasure,” she wrote once—it seems so long ago—in a letter she meant to give to him but never did. Finding the words, looking at the parts of herself that she hated—she wouldn’t have had a reason to do it were it not for the fact that she wanted him to know all of her.)_

“I’m scared, Nate—I don’t know what to do, I’m fucking terrified. What if it doesn’t—what if I can’t—”

And she is sobbing now, words half-formed, tumbling out with the fear acknowledged.

And she knows he doesn’t want to hear this, she knows, it took _so long_ to even have this conversation in the first place and it only happened because she’d been the one to push for it—

Nate holds her, and lets her cry.

“Whatever happens, you have me. You will always have me, I promise,” is the last thing she hears before she falls asleep again, exhausted, drained.

(She thinks he might be crying, too.)

* * *

Things are different, after that.

She feels—fragile.

Unmoored.

* * *

Finally, finally, the answer comes.

The results of those initial tests, the ones from years ago, the ones before Murphy—they provide the key.

It is not the mutation in her blood that is preventing the venom from working.

Her blood would, _should_ be able to react to it.

Except—

Except that because of what Murphy did to her, half her blood is supernatural. Half the blood in her veins is vampire blood.

Only half.

Only the blood.

Her DNA remains unaltered, purely and uniquely human, but it's enough.

Enough for the venom to be absorbed without any effect or consequence, because vampire venom does not react with vampire blood.

Because supernaturals can't be turned into other supernaturals.

It’s conclusive, this time, (and trying to undo it would kill her, with such certainty that it is not even something that can be considered at all), and what a fucking _joke_ it is _—_ she would laugh if she weren’t so stunned, isn’t sure she doesn’t—she can never _not_ be human because her body thinks it's already something else.

* * *

That feeling of dread that grew steadily with every closed door, with every negative result—it claws up her throat now. Spills out, nothing containing it anymore.

It was only a matter of time.

Her hands shake as she turns the key in the lock (and she catches a glimpse of the scar on her wrist and she almost _screams_ ) and she is fucking glad she kept the apartment in Wayhaven, now, as she shuts the door behind her and collapses to the floor, a wailing sound like a wounded animal's leaving her—

And then she is crying, sobbing on the floor of an empty apartment she hasn't been to in _god knows how long_ , the palms of her hands pressed hard against her eyelids and still her mind is trying, trying, desperately reaching for any kind of solution, anything that will let her hold on to hope for just a little longer—

But there isn't one.

She _knows_ there isn’t one and she can’t look away from it anymore.

Her whole life she has always found a way forward, a way out of everything; things have always worked out in the end, but this, this, this one time—

This one thing—

She can never be their equal.

This one thing that she _wants—_

That abyss between them that she had thought possible to bridge, had _not_ thought she could _not_ bridge will do nothing but grow wider and wider and wider until—

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, _shit_.

What the fuck happens now?

How does she—?

_Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...i uh, i'm sorry?
> 
> the quotes are from Tennessee Williams in "The Vine" and from Julia Álvarez in "Bilingual Sestina" (a poem I wholly recommend)


End file.
